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Yewei Sun

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Education 

Ph.D., Civil Engineering,  Virginia Tech, Aug 2016 - May 2020

M.S., Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, Jan 2015 - Jul 2016

B.S., Civil Engineering, Virginia Tech, Aug 2012 - Dec 2014

Water and Wastewater Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, China, Sept 2010 - July 2012

Experience 

Adjunct Faculty, Virginia Tech, Sept 2025 - present 

Instructor, Northern Virginia Regional Institute, AlexRenew, Alexandria, VA Summer 2025

Instructor, Wastewater Process Modeling, Auburn University, Auburn, GA, Fall 2024

Senior Principal Scientist, Hazen and Sawyer, March 2023 - present 

Scientist, Hanzen and Sawyer, June 2020 - March 2023

Awards

40 Under 40 Award, American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (2025)

Gascoigne Wastewater Treatment Plant Operational Improvement Medal, Water Environment 

Federation (2024)

 Thomas J. Grizzard, Jr. Graduate Fellowship, Virginia Tech (2020)

AWWA ACE Travel Grant, Virginia American Water Works Association (2019)

1st Place, WaterJAM Fresh Idea Poster Competition (2019)

Sonny Roden Graduate Scholarship, Virginia Water Environment Association (2019)

Hydromantis Student Travel Award, Association of Environmental Engineering and Science 

Professors (2017)

Wastewater Management

Sun Y.W., Khunjar W.O., Rosenfeldt E.J., Selbes M., and Wang Z.W. (2025). Mechanistic Understandings of the Convoluted Impacts of Hydraulic Loading Rates, Temperature, Chlorine Doses, and Media Sizes on the Performance of Biologically Active Filtration Applied for FullScale Drinking Water Treatment, Water Research, 124011

2. Sun, Y.W., Shad M. F., Mansell B., Liu M., Hsia P., Coracero A., … & Latimer R. (2025). Leveraging Primary Effluent- and Glycerol-Driven Partial Denitrification-Anammox within a Pilot-Scale Tertiary Step-feed Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor Treating High-Rate Activated Sludge Systems Effluent. Water Research, 123505

3. Wang, J.*, Sun, Y.W.*, Khunjar, W., Pace, G., McGrath, M., Chitrakar, S., ... & Wang, Z. W. (2025). Kinetic Mechanism of Methanol-fed Partial Denitrification Anammox in Tertiary Moving Bed Biofilm Reactors Fed with Real Secondary Effluent. Chemical Engineering Journal, 161160

4. Wang, J.*, Sun, Y.W.*, Khunjar, W., Pace, G., McGrath, M., Chitrakar, S., ... & Wang, Z. W. (2025). Mechanistic understanding of the performance difference between methanol-and glycerol-fed partial denitrification anammox in tertiary moving bed biofilm reactors treating real secondary effluent. Water Research, 122893.

5. Sun Y.W., Pace G., McGrath M., Chitrakar S., Yin H., Munshimd R., Pitt P., Khunjar W. (2025) Combining Partial Denitrification-Anammox and Biological Selection-Driven Densification without Physical Selection at a Full-Scale Water Resource Recovery Facility While Maintaining Strict Nitrogen Limits (In Preparation)

6. He L., Smerigan A., Sun Y.W., Shi R., Wang M. (2025) Climate Trade-offs in Wastewater Treatment: A Life Cycle Perspective on HiCS-IX-PNA and Alternative Technologies (In Preparation)

7. Sun Y.W., Khunjar W.O., Wang, Z. W., Pitt P., Latimer R. (2025) Theoretical Understanding of the Impact of Feast/Famine Ratio on Non-Tightly Bounded EPS and Sludge Settleability for Full-Scale Continuous Flow Densified Activated Sludge Design (In Preparation)